I’m not making any more predictions this election – things are just too turbulent and unsettled (OK, I’ll make one. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be re-elected. And the Iowa Electronic Markets, which I follow pretty closely, are showing some definite trends…).
But I’ll make one absolute prediction about what we’ll be doing a week from today – as we wake up to the election results. We’ll be fighting about them.
This is going to be one of the ugliest elections in post WWII America; we will approach Third-World levels of distrust in the process. And that needs to be fixed.I’ve lived most of my adult life in California, which has a history of relatively clean elections (except for San Francisco, back in the 50’s), and so I’ve missed much of the cynicism that many of my peers who grew up in places like Chicago and Cleveland may have.
But the level of concern and scrutiny around voting are higher than ever. As I’ve said, that’s a not necessarily really bad thing, if it leads us to better processes and more transparency. Refs in football and baseball and line judges in tennis blew calls before instant replay; in the modern era of television and computerized scrutiny, I’ll say that the quality of refereeing in major sports has gone up because we can replay the serve or the tag at home and see whether the ref erred. Transparency and auditability count.
But there was an ugly period – when television was exposing the shortcomings of human refs and before the management of the game had taken these tools into account – when trust in the refs started to collapse.
We’re there now when it comes to voting. Part of it is the increasing sophistication of the electoral “mechanics” all high-level candidates employ. Part of it is the fact that those mechanics now do their work in plain daylight, in courtrooms, and in the media.
But we see the vulnerabilities of the system, and those vulnerabilities make us less and less certain of the outcomes, and more and more concerned that some dark conspiracy – of ACORN activists or Diebold fat cats – is deciding the outcome. And so, at the end of the day, he’s not your President.
The problem, of course, is that we have to live as though he is – whoever he is – for our polity to work. When I quoted Schaar a long time ago (and then in comments recently), the key graf for me is this one:
Abraham Lincoln, the supreme authority on this subject, thought there was a patriotism unique to America. Americans, a motley gathering of various races and cultures, were bonded together not by blood or religion, not by tradition or territory, not by the calls and traditions of a city, but by a political idea. We are a nation formed by a covenant, by dedication to a set of principles, and by an exchange of promises to uphold and advance certain commitments among ourselves and throughout the world. Those principles and commitments are the core of American identity, the soul of the body politic.
(from “On Patriotism”, by John Schaar)
That political idea at the center of our covenant is that the government is responsible to the people through the vote. When that belief is tarnished too badly, the covenant sickens and may die.
Right now, that political idea is under a lot of challenge:
First get into a business you don’t understand, selling to customers who barely understand it either. Then roll out your product without adequate testing. Don’t hire enough skilled people. When people notice problems, deny, obfuscate and ignore. Finally, blame your critics when it all blows up in your face.
With missteps like those, it would be hard to succeed in the gumball business. But when your product is the hardware and software of democracy itself, that kind of performance gets you called not just incompetent but evil – an enemy of democracy. And that is what has happened to Diebold Inc. (Charts) of Canton, Ohio, since it got into the elections business in 2001.
County election officials who spoke to TIME reported that most of the fears they field about the new machines come from Democrats, who have not won a national election in three cycles. It may be that a solid Democratic win in 2006 will allay some of their worries. It follows, of course, that if the Republicans lose, they will take up the charge. In fact, that’s already happening in some places this year.
The fall elections shape up as the most technologically perilous since 2000, election officials say, because 30% of the nation’s voting jurisdictions will be using new equipment. They include large parts of Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, scenes of key Senate races. “If you’re ever going to have a problem, it’s going to be that first election,” says Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services.
We focus on the machines, because they are visible, and obviously problematic.
But voting is a system; you register, are enrolled, vote, have your vote counted, have your vote recounted, etc.
There is the potential for massive problems at virtually every step in the process.
We’re mishandling the new-tech voting machines and making them incredibly vulnerable – not only the overnights that we did in the CD-50 special election, but in today’s news from Tennessee…
Political insiders have expressed alarm after 12 voter smartcards have gone missing from one Shelby County, TN early vote location!
The cards are used to activate electronic voting machines.
The location at the center of the controversy is Bishop Byrne High School on E. Shelby Drive in Memphis.
The polling place started out with 25 cards. By Wednesday, 11 were missing, says an eyewitness.
But we also have problems with the old-fashioned paper systems as well. From the Joint Task Force on Election Fraud (the Milwaukee Police Department, Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the United States Attorney’s Office):
D. Vote Total Discrepancy
An additional finding of the task force to date is that the number of votes cast far exceeds the total number of recorded voters. The day after the November 2, 2004 election, the City of Milwaukee reported the total number of votes as 277,344. In late November an additional 191 previously uncounted absentee ballots were added, for a total of 277,535 votes cast. Still later, an additional 30 ballots were added, bringing the total number of counted votes to 277,565. City records, however, have been unable to match this total to a similar number of names of voters who cast ballots – either at the polls (under a prior registration or same day registration) or cast absentee ballots. At
present, the records show a total of 272,956 voter names – for a discrepancy of 4,609.
FYI – Kerry won in Wisconsin – 1,489,504 votes to 1,478,120 for a margin of 11,384.
That’s because we don’t want a strong ID policy at the registration level, because over 1/3 of us vote absentee with few checks and controls, because the systems (the combination of human and machine processes) that count votes are not robust – and because we want results 30 minutes after the polls close.
Up to now, we’ve been able – like the sports fans back in the 1950’s – to rely on the basic integrity of election officials to keep the level of error and fraud to an ‘acceptable’ level. But the television cameras are on, and we can all see that the baserunner was really safe.
So what’s needed is an overhaul of the system itself.
What’s needed is a careful examination of the process – from registration to recount – and a commitment to fix it by making it reliable, transparent, and reviewable. There will be limits to what we do – we can, as Bruce Schnier says, make something so secure that it can’t be used or can’t be afforded. We need to make voting easy enough not to drive anyone entitled to vote away. We need to make it reliable enough that people trust the results. We need to make the processes by which this is done totally transparent so that people trust the results.
How do we do this?
To do that fixing, there is one election that matters. That is the race for California Secretary of State, and the candidate is Debra Bowen.
I’m asking you to do three things:
1. Watch her debate with her opponent, Bruce McPherson.
2. Watch McPherson’s ad.
3. Once you’ve watched it, I think your position will be pretty clear. Go over to the Bowen website and toss her a few bucks. If you live in California and haven’t voted absentee yet, vote for her. Ask your friends in California to vote for her. If you have voted absentee, note that in many counties the signature-matching software that will validate your absentee ballot is made by Diebold, and has never been through any rigorous testing.
The rush to electronic voting in the aftermath of the 2000 election never made any sense–from the point of view taken in the post, i.e. that the legitimacy of the voting procedure at every step is an important feature of our democracy.
It always made sense from the perspective of businesses who want to sell machines, and from that of politicians thinking, “don’t just stand there, do something!”
And also from the viewpoint of political junkies and of TV news organizations, for whom it seems crucial that election results be reported on the nightly newscast, within hours of the closing of the polls.
I think this last reason for the rush to electronic gets short shrift. The Emporer’s New Clothes question would be: “Is it really important whether results are known tonight, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow?”
One way to vote more-or-less absentee and bypass the signature matching software is to go to the county elections office early voting stations this weekend.
(That’s how i’m voting, largely because I will be working in a polling place on election day and can’t make it to mine, and I haven’t received my absentee yet).
It’s the same set of factors that put PCs in classrooms. Sheer lunacy. And now Drudge is reporting 12 Smartcards missing in Tennessee. Maybe we can get the Mexicans and Iraqis to come help us run an honest election. No absentee ballots, auditable ballots, fingers in indelible ink, etc.
Also don’t forget the Ballots by the Bay from Pelosi’s home town. And Richard Nixon didn’t practice any dirty tricks before he got to Washington, right? Californians elections are no more or less honest than those of the rest of the country. They just know better how to create the illusion that they are. Willing suspension of disbelief; that’s what Hollywood is all about.
_The rush to electronic voting in the aftermath of the 2000 election never made any sense_
The Bush v. Gore decision indirectly required a lot of states to get new equipment.
If you recall, the SCOTUS stopped the recount because it was only going to involve some of the counties. Different treatment of the ballots violated equal protection regardless of whether the partial recount was intended to disenfranchise voters are cause a disparate impact on a minority.
The following year, lawsuits were filed against states that allowed local governments to choose the equipment. States like California, Illinois and Ohio and mixtures of different voting equipment and the courts said there was a case because the votes were being handled differently. The states agreed to get new equipment.
Something else has changed in the past few decades besides voting systems. Polling and ‘marketing’ has become pervasive, and pretty accurate too. And its results are communicated much like the play-by-play of a ball game. The result is the candidates are able to modify and communicate their message/position on a continual basis to try to capture 50% +1 of the electorate. What we the people see is that there is seldom much difference between candidates or parties – each has moved as close to the middle as it thinks it needs to/can, and so often wins by a margin within the error of the voting system. Votes may be counted and victors declared after election day, but the position of the winner was arrived at over a period of months or years leading up to the election itself – regardless of who wins.
(I’m speaking statistically of course, there are always exceptions.)
Well, about all I’ll say is keep your grubby national standardization fingers off NY. We’re doing quite well, here, and don’t need the help of people who do have major problems with their election process telling us they coming to help.
We spread our door sills with commonsense to ward off the plague of the 2000 overhaul frenzy and, as a result I’ll go to the polls Tuesday comforted in the knowledge that our system will run smoothly using the good ol’ mechanical voting machines we’ve had for 50+ years. As for the results, my confidence in our system will not be diminished one iota, whatever they are.
And, respectfully, AL, if you have a need to paint expectations of third-world like distrust, you ought to paint where it’s required, on the districts and states that deserve it and not try to sell a national paint job.
I do agree that voting machines are a problem. Heck, Chicago pols were rigging the old analog versions years ago so this is not a new issue. But the new machines at least require some knowledge of computers. ACORN and such show that elections can be stolen the old-fashioned way; stuffed ballot boxes and armies of dead people coming to vote Democratic.
Until we have some sort of Voter ID requirement, it is all just dacning around the edges. The Dems are up in arms against the electronic voting but they are also dead-set against any sort of Voter ID. I can only assume that is because the Democrats are so well-versed in the old fashioned ways of cheating and that they need more time to get up to speed on electronic cheating.
I would support Ms Bowen if she truly cared about the issue of illegal voting but her refusal to support Voter ID makes that impossible.
And a comment to Mrs Davis above who dug up the ghost of Nixon. It is well established that Nixon lost to Kennedy in 1960 due to voting irregularities in Illinois and specifically Chicago. Nixon refused to contest the votes from IL for fear of what it would do to the nation. Compare and contrast to Algore’s reaction in 2000…
Um, Dusty – do you have any idea how easy it is to rig an mechanical vote tabulator? Just bring your #2 pencil…
A.L.
AL, I understand that it is easy to rig mechanicals. I also realize it’s easy it is to stuff ballot boxes, steal smart cards, and get around safeguards of all the bright and shiny new systems being touted, not to mention the confusion that can be caused in the setup.
Voters can also screw up punch cards, or the local election commission can send too few machines to a district or not keep rolls current. Personally, I won’t argue a list of probable error and fraud is endless. But I am not of the ‘how can I find an end-run to my advantage’ persuasion. I would, however, point to the Internet, computers, and campaign financing, as examples where problems of a scurrilous nature seem endless.
The suggestion that buying a first year model car is not a good idea and that you should wait for a couple of years for the bugs to be worked out the model has been a sound one. So, too, was the idea that you don’t buy brand new software (of course, designers standardized the Beta version method in an attempt to reduce that reluctance.)
NY’s mechanicals may have a lower level of tamperproof-ness than alternatives. But that is not the worry here. There have been many major improvements since 1892 when Western NY was first in the nation to use them (including adding dual counters, one hidden and secondarily secured). The worry here is that the basic machine we’ve been using for more than lifetime (not counting up upgrades) is obsolete — the company quit making them and its spare parts long ago. But I’ll offer that the confidence in their accuracy is high via improvements made over the years, and the security deficiencies of the machines addressed by an overall process to guard against such a potentiality. I trust that the three observers of different parties for each machine will prevent machine rigging and errant reading and tabulation afterwards. Our system is time-tested and familiar to us.
We’re so confident that with our system machine rigging or errors in tabulation won’t be screwed up with a #2 pencil, we even let poll workers use them. That’s not to say it might not be tried or a controversy might not crop up at some time, but if you think there is a solution eliminate that once and for all … well, no, I know you better than that.
As I indicated before, AL, if you have problems with your system, by all means, go ahead and fix them. Just keep in mind that the problems with your system or those of Wisconsin or Florida are not caused by New Yorkers or NY’s system.
Another urban legend resurfaces:
Bullshit. First, Nixon would have lost the Electoral College even if he had won Illinois. JFK 303, Nixon 219, value of Illinois 27 EV.
But that’s not all. A down-ticket candidate did ask for a recount, which did not find enough new GOP votes to alter the result.
And what’s more, the GOP was just as tenacious as Al Gore, while Nixon pretended to stand above the fray. Indeed, the GOP National Treasurer announced that Nixon had won in Illinois (previous link, not added for filtering reasons). I don’t recall any Democrats doing that in 2000.
Well, you can fool some of the people all of the time.
It’s impossible to eliminate all fraud. However, stuffing ballot boxes, voting with false IDs, and the like, must be done _retail_. You need to put in the work, and take the risk of discovery, for each vote.
The really scary thing about computerized voting is the opportunity for fraud committed _wholesale_. By rigging the software cleverly, it is possible for a small number of conspirators to swing important numbers of votes all over the state, or all over the country.
That’s why this is so important.
Conspiracy theories are typically bogus, because a large enough conspiracy to do the Dirty Deed (whatever it was) would be so large that it would virtually certainly be blown by one of the conspirators.
Not so with rigging software. A handful of people in the right place, conceivably as few as one (though this would be very unlikely), could do the deed. And that small a group might be able to keep the secret.
So don’t dismiss this kind of “conspiracy theory” out of hand.
My comments ’til now unduly center on the type of machine we use here, AL, and I know your post does not concentrate so on that element of elections systems. It was not my intention to do that.
There was some question of purging of the rolls of dead people here in NY recently. (That, I’d say, is an issue always and everywhere.) Not being blind or handicapped, I cannot tell you what features have been added to our system to address those potential problems, because I have no need for them. They could be a cause of contention. If I have heard any complaint, here, more regularly, it is the sometimes confusing wording of initiatives and amendments.
Our ballot format is the same every single election. It is one large page, mounted on the machine. Amendments/Initiatives take up the top row. Below that row are the office columns with layout highest office to the left down to lowest to the right. The different parties make up the rows, with the candidates for each party in their respective column. That never changes and right now I can basically see the levers I’ll push.
Not that it matters much, but I know the election observers, two are neighbors and one by sight; one is a R, one a D, and one an I (I’m sure it isn’t like that everywhere and they get a pittance for their work.) They rotate regularly on the functions and each function is checked by another.
I sign on to their book of names and they have a copy of my signature as a reference to which they can compare the one I enter. I can’t see it until I sign because while one handles the book, the other covers the reference signature. They keep a hand tabulation of the number of voters signing in on a sheet of paper with their #2 pencil :-), the # of voters is kept by the machine, and, by default, it’s in the book, too.
As I mentioned, there are two counters in the machine, one of which can’t be accessed by the observers. I did ask them about checking the machine once and I can’t remember exactly what they said, but they did say they can and do check on the morning of the vote before voting starts that both counters can be seen to be zeroed out and that all three observers confirm it.
I don’t know about all the other potential issues — lost this or that; someone isn’t in the book; someone going to vote and finding a vote already occurred under their name; machines breaking in the process; tally errors; refusals to let someone vote; etc. I do know that I cannot think of these potential issues showing up in the paper as realities in the days after any election.
Since I do not believe we NYer’s are superior race of people, a more cowed one, or a more backward one, I attribute the lack of controversy is the result of the system in place. Most of that, I think, is due to it’s many iterations of testing and correction of defects, of which standardization is one very important component.
So, I am not against standardization, per se. What I am against is change only for the sake of change. We will switch our machines when we are ready and when there is a machine worthy of replacing the ones we have now without affecting the level of confidence in our system overall. Is that so hard to not leave alone?
But in saying all that, I will agree with you that there ought to be an effort nationwide to reduce the margins for error in elections as well as the potential for introduced error, whether innocent or malevolent, primarily because we can. Moreso, we have to for the reasons of trust you have described, a trust put in jeopardy not only by the continual encroachment of the political for solving everything societal but also because the philosophical divide on what the solutions are have become so close to equal and opposite.
And now I apologise for my meandering epics.
One other effect is that as most other areas of life have gotten more and more precise and predictable, polling – especially political polling – has actually gotten worse. For various reasons that are still unclear, polls have come to consistently overcount Democrats. I’ve almost never seen a poll that ended up overcounting Republicans versus the election-day result.
More than a few Dems argue that this is due to Republican fraud, but many others argue that for various cultural and demographic reasons, more Republicans are less patient with the machinery of poll-taking than are Democrats, so are consistently undercounted.
Foobarista [#15]: I’d just say this remains an open question.
I seem to recall discussions through the ’80s and ’90s that exit polls were strikingly accurate predictors of the final outcome of elections. Then in the ’00s, we seem to discover that Republicans are undercounted by exit polls relative to Democrats.
I don’t know the data on this, and I’m just going on recollection here, but it certainly seems to me that one would want to at least pay careful attention to the fraud hypothesis, rather than dismissing it out of hand.
Of course, the winners are happy with the outcome of the election, and the losers are just … losers. So why bother to look? Only if you think democracy (and the integrity of elections) is more important than which team wins this time around.
Seems to me we could solve part of the problem by stiffening voter fraud penalties. Face a hefty fine plus twenty years or even the death bet it clears itself up.
dos centavos:
Absolutely. We are a nation founded on popular sovereignty, not on kingship or other ruling principles. Subverting democracy is therefore treason of the deepest dye, and ought to be prosecuted as such.